You wear a ring of great beauty — may I look at it?" by Sir Luke Fildes. Ninth full-page illustration for Charles Lever's Lord Kilgobbin: A Tale of Ireland in Our Time, facing page 195. Reprinted from the May 1871 number of the Cornhill Magazine. 10.4 cm by 15.9 cm (4 by 6 ¼ inches), framed. Part 8, Chapter XXXIII, "Plmnuddm Castle, North Wales." [Click on the illustration to enlarge it.]
Passage Realised: A Confidential Conversation in the Drawing-room of Plmnuddm Castle
Right: The initial page for the eighth instalment in Volume XXIII of the Cornhill Magazine (April, 1871).
"Wish me success in my expedition," said he eagerly.
"Yes, I will wish that also. One word more. I am very short-sighted, as you may see, but you wear a ring of great beauty. May I look at it?"
"It is pretty, certainly. It was a present Walpole made me. I am not sure that there is not a story attached to it, though I don’t know it."
"Perhaps it may be linked with the 'entanglement,'" said she, laughing softly.
"For aught I know, so it may. Do you admire it?"
"Immensely," said she, as she held it to the light.
"You can add immensely to its value if you will," said he diffidently.
"In what way?"
"By keeping it, Lady Maude," said he; and for once his cheek coloured with the shame of his own boldness.
"May I purchase it with one of my own? Will you have this, or this?" said she hurriedly.
"Anything that once was yours," said he, in a mere whisper.
"Good-bye, Mr. Atlee." [Chapter XXXIII, "Plmnuddm Castle, North Wales," 195]
Commentary: Lady Maude Bickerstaffe and Joe Atlee offer us clues in their attire
In Chapter XIV, Cecil Walpole pays Joe Atlee for his medical services and agreeing to accompany him back to Dublin; the "wages" are a token rather than money, a ring with "an opal with brilliants round it" (94), a distinctive piece that next appears in Chapter XXIV, "Two Friends at Breakfast," when Cecil Walpole, still incapacitated by virtue of the wound he sustained in the Fenians' abortive raid on Kilgobbin Castle, mentions H. E. Lord Danesbury's niece, the Lady Maude Bickerstaffe, as he arranges for Joe Atlee to be his messenger to the Viceroy. Cecil had hoped that Danesbury would take up Atlee as his replacement for the mission to Constantinople. Thus, we are prepared for Joe's encountering Lady Maude after dinner as Atlee departs from Plmnuddm Castle in Wales on the confidential overseas mission that her uncle has assigned him. Atlee has been smitten ever since the moment he saw Lady Maude "sail proudly into the library before dinner" (193). And now, here they are together in a private, after-dinner conversation. Lady Maude interrogates the elegantly attired Atlee (who is wearing one of Walpole's most fashionable and expensive jackets) about Walpole's admitting to a romantic "entanglement" (of which Joe knows nothing, and certainly not that Lady Maude herself is that entanglement). She now brings up the subject of the distinctive opal ring. We may well suspect that the ring was her gift to Walpole.
The richly furnished dining-room forms a suitable setting for this meeting between the politically-savvy outsider and the Viceroy's perceptive niece. There seems to be nothing remarkable about her attire, which Fildes has based on the following description: "Though not in actual evening-dress, her costume was that sort of demi-toilet compromise which occasionally is most becoming; and the tasteful lappet of Brussels lace, which, interwoven with her hair, fell down on either side so as to frame her face, softened its expression to a degree of loveliness he was not prepared for" (193). Fildes has realised every aspect of this fashionable attire, making the multi-tiered flounces of the skirt dominate the right of the picture. Moreover, against his normally cautious nature, Joe has elected to wear the stunning jacket he has borrowed from Walpole, failing to consider that Lady Maude may well recognize it, and consequently divine the relationship between Joe and Cecil:
Among the articles of that wardrobe of Cecil Walpole’s of which Atlee had possessed himself so unceremoniously, there was a very gorgeous blue dress-coat, with the royal button and a lining of sky-blue silk, which formed the appropriate costume of the gentlemen of the viceregal household. This, with a waistcoat to match, Atlee had carried off with him in the indiscriminating haste of a last moment, and although thoroughly understanding that he could not avail himself of a costume so distinctively the mark of a condition, yet, by one of the contrarieties of his strange nature, in which the desire for an assumption of any kind was a passion, he had tried on that coat fully a dozen times, and while admiring how well it became him, and how perfectly it seemed to suit his face and figure, he had dramatised to himself the part of an aide-de-camp in waiting, rehearsing the little speeches in which he presented this or that imaginary person to his Excellency, and coining the small money of epigram in which he related the news of the day.
"How I should cut out those dreary subalterns with their mess-room drolleries, how I should shame those tiresome cornets, whose only glitter is on their sabretaches!" muttered he, as he surveyed himself in his courtly attire. "It is all nonsense to say that the dress a man wears can only impress the surrounders. It is on himself, on his own nature and temper, his mind, his faculties, his very ambition, there is a transformation effected; and I, Joe Atlee, feel myself, as I move about in this costume, a very different man from that humble creature in grey tweed, whose very coat reminds him he is a “cad,” and who has but to look in the glass to read his condition."
On the morning he learned that Lady Maude would join him that day at dinner, Atlee conceived the idea of appearing in this costume. [Chapter XXXIII, 191 in volume]
Thus, since these details of costuming and the opal ring are not merely incidental to the after-dinner scene (suggested by the ornately set table, left), Fildes makes Joe Atlee's rather affected courtier's coat his focus. And to complement it Fildes gives Joe silk breeches and stockings rather than trousers.
Scanned images and commentary by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose, as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Lever, Charles. Lord Kilgobbin. The Cornhill Magazine. With 18 full-page illustrations and 18 initial-letter vignettes by S. Luke Fildes. Volumes XXII-XXV. October 1870-March 1872.
Lever, Charles. Lord Kilgobbin: A Tale of Ireland in Our Own Time. Illustrated by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A. London: Smith, Elder, 1872, 3 vols.; rpt., Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Lever, Charles. Lord Kilgobbin. Illustrated by Sir Luke Fildes. Novels and Romances of Charles Lever. Vols. I-III. London: Smith, Elder, 1872, Rpt. London: Chapman & Hall, 1873, in a single volume. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: 19 August 2010.
Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter XVI, "Exile on the Adriatic, 1867-1872." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell and Russell, 1939; rpt. 1969. Pp. 277-296.
Sutherland, John A. "Lord Kilgobbin." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 382.
Created 24 October 2007 Updated 25 June 2023